Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1887-07-20
CHE farm aud fireside.
FARMING ON BUSINESS PRINCIPLES.

The articles which have appeared re-
Gently in the Southern CuNirator and other
agricultural journals, about how well
farms do ordo not pay, or what they might
be made to pay, and what they never
would pay, remind MI of one special in
stance of successful farming in Germany.
This instance of the success of an intel
ligent business man, on farms where before
him a number of practical and scientific"
farmers had failed, has settled conclusive
ly the question, in my mind, whether
farms can be made to pay handsome profits
or not; and also convinces me that the
successful man must neither be a purely
practical nor theoretical farmer, but that a
practical, common sense business head
must be his first requirement. Some of
the CultiUdtor readers may say: "Well,
that NAV all be nice and good in Europe,
where labor is cheap and provisions dear"
To this I can answer That is true, but it
is more than balanced by two things: first,
by the high price of land !; second, by the
peculiar way land has for generations been
sub-divided in middle Germany, at the
death of an owner and intermixed with
that of other owners, so that the extreme
distance of pieces of land of n farm OF
say 300 or 400 acres is quite frequently as
much as five or six miles, and makes the
use of labor-saving farming implements
quite expensive if not impossible, besides
wasting the time on going to and fro, but
also the wages of good farm hands are to-
day not so low as they used to be twenty or
thirty years ago; the best steady lnen get
from $50 to $500 a year and board, day Ia
borers, at harvest time, from sixty to six
ty-fve cents per day, and in extreme times
even quite considerably more. Besides,
boarding such hands here is much cheaper
than in Germany, where beef is in rural
districts from fifteen cents upward, mess
pork and bacon from twenty cents upward,
etc. Now, when I compare the conditions
over there with those in America, the sit
uation is even very much in favor OF the
United States. Nor is success, like that of
the party in question, the rule, but rather
the exception. Though I know quite a
number of farmers there who have done
we'll, I know a good many more who, un-
der more favorable circumstances than
those described above, have been sitting
thirty or forty years on one and the same
farm, where the Lord would provide any
how, yet they are not a whit better of to-
day than on the day they came there.
They have just made aliving, some a very
good one, but nothing more. That Europe,
and especially Germany, has no advantage
over this country, also finds it's proof in the
fact that a large percentage of the German
emigrants are farmers, not only farm hands
but men who used to own their farms at
home out and out, but were unable to make
a living, and either sold out before a COL
lapse, or were sold out by their creditors.
If in the United States a farmer has his
| place clear, nothing is as easy for him as
to make a living on it; the industrious
man will always make a good living and
lay something by if he is very saving; the
lazy man, a living anyhow, in spite of his
Incidence. It is sometimes most astonlsh-
| ing how much time some farmers have to
white away at a piece of wood, smoke
their pipes or have a talk with the neigh
bors, or what is worse, to 20 fishing, hunt
ing or "visiting," but how rarely they get
a chance to do a square days work on their
farms! Still they live for all that They
may look like ''rag-a-muffins," or scare
crows, but on closer inspection they can
| yet be recognized as human beings. While
it is quite easy to make simply a living on
a farm, to be really successful or grow rich
by farming, it requires as much business
tact as in any other pursuit. There as here
it is as the saying of the old German prov
erb, which l will try to translate, "HoW |
care so I fare."-SoMhern C%uliUdtor.